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[Applause]

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Thanks. So I have to treat Thorsten with a lot of

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respect  because he reminds me of Arnnie Schwarzenegger with a PhD,

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I don't want to get on wrong side of him.  So,

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okay, the view from orbit really does put things

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in perspective and as Senator Nelson has seen this with his own eyes,

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so he knows what I am talking about, I have enjoyed seeing the earth too

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with my own eyes through a space supervisor, and I am absolutely fascinated

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by what a satellite instruments can tell us. We, that's

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NASA and all our friends at NASA, are quite literally conducting a health check

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of the planet. Okay, so these hands on working scientists

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have dazzled with facts and data. It's my job, as a grizzled

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bureaucrat to drag this event over the finish line and let you find your cars.

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So I will try and be quick. So here are a few

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closing thoughts. What all of this means for science, for policy makers

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and for the crew spaceship Earth, that's all of us.

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Okay, this movie shows

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you what happens when we combine the satellite data with computer models

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and use a lot of physics to fill in the gaps between observations.

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Here we are on the space, this is not a snow storm, these are solar particles blasting

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by the earth but we are protected by magnetic field. So the particles are diverted.

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As we come down deeper, and by the way this is a model

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based on physics and observations so there is fact and mathematics,

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Isaac Newton is hard at work here, here is the atmospheric flows, again

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produced by a model, circulation timescales here

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are on hours to days, so we come a little bit deeper in to the world,

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We see the surface winds. Now we are looking at the

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surface, ocean circulation. Ms. Gail said that's forced by heat,

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wind and salinity, timescales of days and months and years.

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Deep yet, and now I will talk with the French accent like Jacques Cousteau,

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the sub surface flows down to the deep ocean circulation,

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timescales of a thousand years or more.

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It's beautiful and we get all of this for combining the satellite

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data with what we understand about nature and putting it in to a computer.

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This stuff is based on actual reality. Not

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the Kardashian kind, but let's get back to think about climate.

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So here is a computer model simulation of the earth's climate system, this is not

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a picture, this is a simulation. It's a toy world

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based on physics and propelled by satellite data. I guess when you look at

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the detail here, the popcorn clouds, the winds,

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or the planetary scale waves in the atmosphere. The snow,

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the ice, the biosphere, it's all

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right there. It's all being calculated and it's all being faithfully reproduced.

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Now what is this all good for? Well, models

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have got to the point of providing weather prediction up to 72 hours

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reliably. You can quite literally bank on it, most days.

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This is going to be Hurricane Sandy, this is actually a model prediction

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of Sandy and as you could see the Hurricane wandered around the Atlantic

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before turning sharply left and whacking New Jersey and New York.

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But accurate warnings were given out 72 hours ahead of time

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and many lives and a lot of money was saved as a result of these

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warnings. By the way, speaking for us, that's not counting

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all the people up and down the East Coast who did not have to evacuate,

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because they knew the Hurricane was going to miss them all together, and hat counts for

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something. Now the exact same physics and many of the same observations that we use

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for weather are helping us to understand climate better.

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And these climate models allow us to peer in to the future and will help us make

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decisions about energy, water and food resources.

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Okay, this is a simulation  of what we think the earth will look like

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in 20 to 30 years. Actually it's not.

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It's the picture of the sun, it's being taken by our heliophysical

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friends using their satellites. Besides being a really cool image,

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it shows that we are keeping a close eye on the sun, again using satellites and guess what,

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we have found the sun to be not guilty for the recent warming trend.

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Now as I said we use the same exact physics  and many of the same satellite

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data to be used in weather models to build and test our climate models.

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Now what these models do tell us is

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the rate of warming depends very largely on how much fossil fuel we use

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and how much carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere.

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I am now going to show you a graph and it is very bad

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form for even like this but in compensation it may be the

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most expensive graph ever made and thats not because of the colors.

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This cost several years of effort by thousands of scientists

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worldwide to put it together and it tell us something, we didn't know

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until only recently. It's something new and something very,

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very simple. What it says is that the expected rise in

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temperature is directly, linearly related to the amount

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of fossil fuel we burn. The X axis of the bottom

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shows how much fossil fuel we burn which makes the carbon dioxide

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and the y-axis shows the temperature increase that results

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from this extra Co2. The zero point is

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roughly or a bit left to the zero point is roughly when fellow in England

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in 1700 decided it was time to start an industrial revolution

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and dug up the first pit of coal. Now, if you look at the black line

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that ends at 2010, you'll see that we burned about 500

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gigatonnes of carbon since then and a gigatonne of carbon is a brick of

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coal about a kilometer on the side so it is a big piece of coal

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and that's give us about 1° C rise in global temperature

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which is what we have seen and that's led to some changes in the world

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that my good friend I've just shown you. Now we'll

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likely to burn 1000 gigatonnes, that's halfway up the graph,

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that will give us two degree centigrade to two and half centigrade increase

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in global temperature. We definitely don't want

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to be up in the top right-hand corner, four degree centigrade.

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This look like a very different planet than the current Earth that we inhabit

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and we don't really know what that planet would look like, how it would work,

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so this is sobering, right? but

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is it necessary going to be grim and nasty to the maximum?

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Is this evening going to be a total down of few you all if we don't count the

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refreshments? I think not and there is some basis for my

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optimism. Here is a picture of the ozone hole that was

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discovered in 1979. The blue color shows that ozone is being

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eaten up by manmade chemicals, many refrigerants. We saw

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the hole growing rapidly in the 80s and 90s

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and this was bad news because ozone protects most of life on Earth

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from strong ultraviolet radiation from the sun and that's bad for you.

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But here is the good part of the story. Governments

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all around the world took information seriously. Here is a UN meeting

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where they are discussing the problem on what to do about it. It modeled

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on Goddard seminar. Here are all the agreements that they

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cranked out to reduce the chemicals that cause the problem

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and here is two of Goddard's finest scientists in the back

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row providing solid science advice

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and eating chips, there they are.

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Alright, and what happen

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Here is a picture of two worlds; on the left is world that we are

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likely to see with the ozone depletion leveling off and then slowly

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reversing and on the right is what would have happened if we didn't have

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all those controls and agreements and blue here means no ozone which is

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bad news. On right-hand side is the world we avoided.

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hat's the world with thinning ozone, a world with damage

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to all living things exposed to sunlight and that includes the crops that provide our

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food, the ocean plankton that makes our oxygen and damage

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to us, people. And now a news flash

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today at four o'clock United Nations

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released a statement. It reads, the Earth's protective

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ozone layer is well on track to recovery in the next few decades

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thanks concerted international action against ozone depleting

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substances according to a new assessment by 300

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scientists. So it can be done,

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this is proof that people and that's all of us and our

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political representatives can use solid information, facts,

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models, like every thing we have seen tonight

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to make the right decisions. Now sometimes it happens a bit later,

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and it takes bit longer than we would like but generally

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the right decisions get made. Now

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there's are a lot of people on this planet.

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This is Christmas 1968

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3 billion people on Earth and there

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they all are, actually we or some of us are,

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minus three because somebody has to take the photo.

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Now here is a picture 2013

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put together from satellite data.  Now there are 7 billion of us

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plus six on

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space station and we will top out at about 9 billion this century

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But again I think there is reason for optimism here because people are actually

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part of the solution. Every new human born

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is not just an extra stress on the world but brings with

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himself or herself resources and answers.

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This is an early picture of Len Fisk. [Laughter]

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So I think,  I hope that with the ingenuity,

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the resourcefulness, the grit that has got the human race so far

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we can use these vital signs about the health of our planet

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to figure out how to live long and prosper on this Earth.

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Now before I close up I'd like to recognize the great work done by the

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visualization team, Ali Ogden, Wade Sisler, Rani Gran,Horace Mitchell and friends who put

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all these beautiful pictures together and of course a huge thank you for all speakers

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and sponsors so put your hand together please.  [Applause]

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[Applause] [Music]

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[Music] end